Totally Purple Tomatoes Are Now a Thing and They’re Super Healthy!

Whether you call them “to-may-toes” or “to-mah-toes”, you may be interested to know that the fleshy fruit is adding a new color to its collection. 

Although tomatoes are traditionally thought of as red, they do come in a range of hues from green to yellow and orange. And it seems we can now add purple to that list. That’s because, after 15 years, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the genetically modified fruit.

The purple tomatoes are the work of biochemist Cathie Martin and her colleagues at Norfolk Plant Scientists (NPS). For more than two decades, the team has been experimenting with pigment production in flowering plants, and their focus for the last 15 has been to develop this unique tomato which is purple on the outside and the inside. 

While there are some tomatoes with purple skin due to the presence of anthocyanins (the antioxidant-rich pigments that give blackberries and blueberries their color), they do not inhabit the entire fruit. 

“Domesticated tomatoes already have genes to produce anthocyanins, but they are not ‘turned on’ in most fruits,” explains BigPurpleTomato.com. “By carefully adding two genes from snapdragons that work like ‘on switches,’ our tomatoes and juice are a rich source of antioxidants, because purple pigments are made in the whole tomato, not just the skins.“

The reason this is good news is because even though antioxidant levels can be increased via supplements, increasing evidence has shown that they work much better when consumed within foods.

Following the USDA approval, NPS is hopeful that distribution of purple tomatoes within the US will commence next year.